


Cough Syrup and Sea Urchins

by elphaba_swan



Series: Rise Up (when you're living on your knees) [2]
Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Descendants (Disney Movies), Greek and Roman Mythology, The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Death, Cough syrup addiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 04:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12124761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elphaba_swan/pseuds/elphaba_swan
Summary: After Mal dumps that bucket of shrimp over Uma's head, Uma goes home. Needless to say, Ursula is not pleased."You couldn’t have just let the little faerie bitch die, could you? No, you had to try and save her, and now you have damned us both with your weakness."--Or, the one where we find out what happened to Uma's siblings





	Cough Syrup and Sea Urchins

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to Don't Forgive or Forget, Ever. It focuses on the aftermath of the 'Shrimpy' incident and how Uma's siblings died.

Uma walked towards her door slowly, trying not to breathe in the scent of shrimp and holding back tears.

_Stupid Mal_ , she thought vengefully, trying hard not to let any tears fall. _I don't care whose daughter she is, that little bitch is going to-_

Suddenly, her mother was in front of her, and she was dragging Uma into the house by her hair with one of her tentacles. She ignored Uma’s shrieks of “Mom! Let go of me!”

Ursula threw Uma inside the tiny hallway and slammed the door behind her so hard that the wooden planks that made up the walls shuddered in unison.

“Ma!” Uma snapped, “What the f-”

She was cut off by the back of her mother’s hand striking her across the face, sending her sprawling across the floor.

Uma barely had time to clutch her face before her mother was in front of her, her voice so deathly quiet that it was worse than it had been if she was yelling.

“You _stupid_ little bitch,” Ursula snarled, the smell of the cough syrup on her breath fanning across the young girl’s face. “Do you have any sense in that head of yours? Do you know what you just did to us, you vile girl?”

Uma tried to speak, but her mother cut her off swiftly. “If even one word comes out of that mouth of yours, I will beat your ass right in front of everyone in this godforsaken island, do you understand me?”

Now truly terrified, Uma nodded and tried to make herself as small as possible.

“It’s lucky that no one important saw what happened . . .” Ursula muttered to herself. “But the people who did see, oh their tongues will wag and soon the news that my daughter is a _weakling_ will reach everyone’s ears. No, don’t you cast your eyes down, look at me when I’m speaking to you, girl, LOOK AT ME WHEN I SPEAK TO YOU!”

Uma felt her throat close up as her mother towered over her, the palpable fury in her frame making her seem taller than ever. “Why in the seven _hells_ you would show weakness like that in public is beyond me. You couldn’t have just let the little faerie bitch die, could you? No, you had to try and save her, and now you have damned us both with your weakness. And your hair?” Ursula lifted up a strand of Uma’s hair contemptuously. “The smell will take _years_ to wash out, if at all. Did you have to be such a colossal embarrassment as well as a disgrace to look at?”

“Mom, I’m sorry,” Uma’s voice was perilously close to begging. “I’ll make you proud, I promise—”

“ _Proud_?” Ursula threw her head back and let out a dark laugh. Then abruptly, her hand closed around Uma’s hair again and she started to drag her daughter out of the hovel.

“Proud, she says,” Ursula sneered as Uma kicked and flailed in an effort to stop her mother from dragging her. “As if.”

Uma bit her lip and willed herself not to cry. _I am descended from the Titans and their powers flow through my veins. I will not cry, I will not, I will not_ –

And then Ursula stopped. They were standing on the edge of the rocky cliff that was behind the hovel. The ocean waves battered the rocks mercilessly as it roared threats with sea spray. Uma tried to squirm away from the edge of the cliff, but Ursula’s tentacles were wrapped like vices around her. Her mother’s voice slid into her ear, satin-like and perfectly poisonous.

“I could never be proud of such a weakling as you,” Ursula hissed as Uma struggled against the grip of her tentacles. “The fact that you even have the audacity to think that proves what I have always known; you are too soft and always have been.”

She pushed Uma even closer to the edge of the cliff, the rocks crumbling threateningly under their combined weight.

Uma took a shuddering breath. “Mom,” she pleaded. “Please—”

“I wish you had died with the rest of your siblings,” Ursula said coldly, before pushing Uma off of the cliff and into the dark water below.

Uma couldn’t make a sound, her mind was swirling with thoughts, but she couldn’t open her mouth, and she was falling and _falling_ \- Then her head hit a rock, and her mind stopped swirling.

\-----

It was nightfall when Uma finally managed to swim against the riptide and scale the cliff. Her fingers were scraped and bloody, and she had a scrape across her cheek from where it had hit the rock. Her entire body felt like it had been doused in fire (fucking King Beast and Triton, cursing them never to go near the ocean again) and when she finally managed to reach the top of the cliff, her legs gave out from under her.

She stayed like that for a moment, breathing heavily and giving her soaked clothing time to dry out. Her back was on the ground, and so she had an uninhibited view of the cloudy night sky, only a few brave stars managing to shine dimly through the fog.

Then her mother was above her, taking a swig out of the bottle of cough syrup and frowning down at her.

Uma wanted to run away, or rage at her, but before she could do anything, her mother gave a jerk of her head and started to slither away, her tentacles making squelching noises as they traveled through the mud.

Uma carefully pushed herself to her feet and followed her mother into the hovel.

When she walked inside, she was greeted with the sight of a threadbare towel and a plate of the least horrible thing that Ursula was able to cook, peppered urchins. Her mother was leaning against the wall, opening yet another bottle of cough syrup.

She had taken the towel and was beginning to squeeze her hair into it when Ursula spoke.

“I remember the day you were all born like it was yesterday.”

Uma froze, her hair still caught in the towel. She turned to face her mother, who was staring at the opposite wall with a far-away look.

“Thalassa, Rune, Seraphine, and Kai were born first. They came kicking and screaming. I was so relieved, I had worried about what would happen to them if they weren’t born in the water. But they were breathing and seemed perfectly fine. That gave me a little more peace of mind when you, Gale, Elara, and Zion were born.”

Uma was still frozen, too afraid to move and possibly anger her mother. Ursula never talked about her brothers and sisters, and she had never asked, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know exactly what had happened to them.

“You were the last born,” Ursula continued, a small smile flashing on her lips. “When you didn’t breathe for that first minute . . . I admit, I feared for your life. You were so small, and your skin was such a strange purple color, that I had already come around to the idea of you dying when you started crying.”

Uma sank onto a stool, staring at her mother.

“What a fool I was,” Ursula sighed, taking a swig of the cough syrup bottle. “I grew too overconfident, and I believed that our family could survive without the ocean. The other children seemed perfectly fine without the ocean, and even though that purple color never really went away on your skin and you had such a hard time breathing, I attributed that to you being so small. But . . . the gods have never given anything to me freely.”

Words were trying to claw themselves out of her throat, but Uma forced them down. She was going to hear what had happened to her siblings even if it killed her to just sit there quietly.

“Rune was the first one,” Ursula said distantly. “His skin started to turn the color of the depths of the ocean, and even though he cried, no tears came out of his eyes. He broke out in a fever and then he started choking for breath-”

Her mother’s voice broke off and she stared down at the worn planks for a moment. Uma felt like she was falling all over again, tumbling towards the air with the waves waiting to devour her below.

“Seraphine and Gale died the same way,” her mother continued, her voice now devoid of emotion. “Then a month passed, and I thought that the sickness had passed. But then Zion started to develop a cough and Elara couldn’t keep anything down without throwing it up . . .”

Absently, Uma noticed that her nails were digging into the flesh of her wrist, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Thalassa lasted the longest,” Ursula said softly. “I was left with only my eldest and youngest, and I couldn’t stop the dehydration, only prolong it. It was the worst kind of hell, watching my children all waste away to nothing, and knowing exactly how to save them, but not being able to do it.” Her voice trembled. “Then Thalassa died, and I swore I would never again let love make such a fool out of me. I was prepared to lose all of my children now.”

_One breath in, one breath out, one breath in, one breath out_ –

“But you didn’t die,” Ursula said suddenly. “The purple disappeared from your skin, and you began to breathe easier. You gained weight, and even grew a few inches. I should have been ecstatic. I should have praised the gods for taking pity on me and sparing one of my children. But I didn’t. Because it was too late. I had already sworn not to let myself be weakened by love ever again, and you were a living, breathing reminder of all that I had lost. The gods did not let you live out of any pity for me. They left you as a reminder of their vengeance, and to make sure I would never raise arms against them again.”

There were tears brimming in Uma’s eyes, and she quickly looked down, trying to make sure her mother didn’t see the tell-tale sheen in her eyes. Unbidden, one of the tears escaped and fell onto the floor.

“I wish you had died,” Ursula said bitterly. “I wish you had gone with the rest of your siblings and left me to kill myself with a clear conscience. I wish that the gods had never cursed me with you.”

She couldn’t hold in a sob this time. Her own mother wished she was dead, so why shouldn’t she cry? It wasn’t like she could make Ursula even more disappointed in her.

Her mother finally deigned to look in her direction and sneered. “Dry your eyes, little girl, and keep hope in the fact that I will never wish you dead as much as I wish that idiotic half-brother of mine and that monster king.” Her lips curled up into a dark sneer. “I need you alive to kill those motherfuckers, do you hear me Uma? You need to make sure that your brothers and sisters are avenged, even if it kills you.”

 


End file.
